This invention relates to the art of cooking food and is more particularly concerned with food cooking machines and food cooking methods which permit even unskilled cooks to prepare a wide variety of foods simply, economically, rapidly, and with consistent success.
Cooking failures, especially by relatively inexperienced cooks, are usually caused by one or more of the following conditions: excessive cooking temperature, excessive cooking time, failure to stir continuously. These conditions individually or collectively result in tough meat, fish and poultry; burned food, sauces, and butter; thick, separated, lumpy, or curdled sauces; soggy vegetables; and overcooked eggs. Conventional cooking utensils, whether of the simple pot and pan variety or the electrified temperature-controlled type, are poorly equipped to alleviate such conditions.
Prior art cooking vessels do not provide sufficiently precise control of cooking temperatures, particularly with respect to control of the rate of boiling. Thus, the cook must either provide excess liquid or keep watching the liquid level to prevent the pan from becoming dry. Excessive amounts of liquid result in loss of nutrients and flavors when excess water is discarded and result in poor economy or efficiency when cooking oil is discarded or recycled after clarification. Heat is usually applied only to the bottom of the cooking vessel, unless complex double boilers, deep-well or oven arrangements are used, and uneven heating and browning of the food is a common problem. The time required to heat the vessel to the desired operating temperature is often longer than the time required to cook the food. Stirring must usually be done manually and with constant attention. Mechanical stirring paddles are impractical, cumbersome, and inapplicable to many foods. Moreover, conventional cooking vessels are large, are not readily accommodated by automatic dishwashers, and are difficult to clean by hand.
Cooking machines, as distinguished from mere heated vessels, have been proposed heretofore. For example, rotary cooking vessels have been proposed for cooking meats, nuts, and other foods. While such devices may have some advantages over conventional cooking vessels and over rotating spits or the like, they do not provide a general purpose high-performance cooking machine. Moreover, they do not provide, in the same machine, high speed cooking, precise temperature control, ease in cleaning, and sufficient versatility to accommodate a wide variety of foods in essentially automatic, even one-step cooking.